{"id":64531,"date":"2025-03-12T09:30:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/?p=64531"},"modified":"2026-03-26T06:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:48:16","slug":"up-to-3-times-less-energy-clean-tech-coffee-roaster-innovators-cee-and-ray-jules-present-the-sunny-kind-of-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/up-to-3-times-less-energy-clean-tech-coffee-roaster-innovators-cee-and-ray-jules-present-the-sunny-kind-of-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"Up to 3 times less energy: clean-tech coffee roaster innovators CEE and Ray & Jules present the sunny kind of coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2.25 billion cups per day on planet Earth. That is a lot of coffee. It goes without saying that coffee is the third most popular drink on the planet, right after water and tea. But unlike water and tea, coffee beans require high-temperature roasting, making the popular beverage a serious \u00e9nergivore. But what if the process could be different? What if you could roast more sustainably? What if you could roast \u201cclean\u201d?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly what Ray & Jules founder Koen Bosmans and his team of engineers from clean-tech sister company CEE thought about when confronted with engineering new machines for the coffee roasting industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A positive paradigm shift for industrial sustainability<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The coffee industry is a tough one. Not only is climate change affecting coffee plantations and farmers (and coffee prices), the technology to roast beans is terribly outdated with 1950s-old-fashioned, energy-consuming batch roasters at work in most large-scale roasting plants around the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, instead of going with the status quo, the team at CEE decided to do something about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince we started in 2007, CEE has had a clear goal: clean tech. We want to make industrial production processes much more energy efficient and make sure they do not emit as much CO2 as before,\u201d explains Koen Bosmans, CEO, CEE and Ray & Jules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breakthrough clean-tech roasting technology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, the Belgian-based company CEE is a leading turnkey supplier for industrial projects mostly in the food and beverage industry as well as construction materials. Their industrial energy-efficient roasters and drying machines, featuring innovative breakthrough technologies in roasting, drying and energy recovery, are handcrafted in their brand-new factory in Geel, Belgium, prior to being custom-installed onsite at the customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s difficult sometimes to convince companies in more traditional sectors to switch to a new production technology. In 2014, we had this idea about getting rid of batch processes and moving towards continuous roasting processes in the coffee business,\u201d explains Bosmans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

But the big players in the roasting industry were hard to convince so Koen Bosmans and Kristof Cambr\u00e9, who is Chief Production Officer or CPO at CEE, came up with a unique proof of concept: Ray & Jules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 2017, we created Ray & Jules as a separate sister company. It was the first company to use our zero-emission roasting technology to roast coffee. It took us two years to build the roasting facility. It really took blood, sweat, and tears, but we persisted. And in December 2019, we launched Ray & Jules as a brand.\u201d <\/p>Koen Bosmans, CEO, CEE – Ray & Jules<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The big coffee roaster rethink<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, thanks to Ray & Jules, CEE can show the big players that their breakthrough innovation works. The CEE engineers proposed an out-of-the-box alternative to the traditional roaster with thanks to some help from Siemens Xcelerator software tools. Traditional coffee roasting works in instant batches and uses lots of energy, typically gas, to quickly reach high temperatures for fast roasting times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upscale industrial rethink that CEE came up with was a continuous process opening the door for much more energy efficiency, including using a conduction rather than convection heat transfer system. This made it much easier to recuperate energy and keep as much energy as possible in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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